1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium playing apparatus, and more particularly to a recording medium playing apparatus arbitrarily selecting for reproduction each information piece of a recording medium in which a plurality of information pieces, capable of variously representing a scene in the same time axis position during reproduction of information, are recorded.
2. Description of Background Information
Optical disk players for reproducing sound information or image information recorded on an optical recording disk or the like are known. In an optical disk, information is recorded, as represented by movie software or picture viewing (enjoying) software, in such a way that image information is recorded in association with sound information, and formed as a collection of information pieces which is divided into still pictures or moving pictures having predetermined time length. Each information piece is recorded together with a corresponding frame number or chapter number, so that each information piece is identified.
As the information pieces are recorded on the optical disk described above, along a time axis for reproducing the scenes, in a normal playback operation all of the information pieces are reproduced by an optical disk player. Depending on the cases, the optical disk is played after an order of reproduction of the information pieces is programmed and stored by using the frame number or the chapter number.
In recent years, on the other hand, it is contemplated to prepare, as recording information of an optical disk, images which are taken from different directions (angles) or images of different scenes as images of the same time, and to record the images in parallel with each other. For instance, if a baseball game is recorded on an optical disk, a plurality of information pieces representing images of a scene such as a home-run scene which forms a point of the game, taken from various directions, for instance, from behind the pitcher or from behind the catcher, are recorded in parallel, and optical disks of this sort are the examples.
However, if an optical disk of this sort is played in a conventional optical disk player, all of the image or scenes of the same time which are recorded in parallel will be reproduced consecutively. In the case of the reproduction of the baseball game which is mentioned above, it will be, for example, necessary to previously select all of information pieces corresponding to a predetermined direction, and to program and store the reproduction order so that other information pieces corresponding to images or scenes of the same time will not be reproduced. Furthermore, if a user wishes to reproduce the images at a different direction after having programmed a reproduction operation corresponding to the predetermined direction, the user is required to repeat the programming each time. Thus, with conventional optical disk players, user has been burdened with the necessity of performing a number of manipulating steps.